Blog Archives

Apparently Jeff doesn’t approve of beards in the peloton. Besides that, we discuss all the racing fun of the last few weeks, including Tour of Flanders, Milan-Sanremo, E3 Harelbeke, and Gent-Wevelgem- plus, we talk about all of our favorites of the season so far!

It’s that most bittersweet time of year when we reflect on the season that was. We talk about our favorite moments and our favorite riders. We were impressed with the Colombians and the youngsters the most! The future looks bright!

We say goodbye to Andy Schleck and the racing season, as we reminisce about Andy Schleck and recap Worlds and Lombardia. We also wonder if we’ll look back and see Oleg as the “Idea Man” who saves cycling and discuss whether Astana is playing the UCI and MPCC.

As we recorded this the night before the ITT, I’m definitely eating my words today… don’t judge too much! We also talk about Sagan and whether soon only the super teams of Saxo and BMC will be left, whether the anti-doping crusade is ruining cycling, Tyler Ferrar’s move to MTN, and more!

Oh my, what a day! Highs and lows, crashes and recoveries and abandons.

Biggest Low: Froome out 😦 For whatever reason, I’m no fan of Froome, but I felt a little teary when I saw him crash, then climb into the car. It always sucks to see a big contender pull the plug.

And cue the chorus of people proclaiming “Where’s Wiggo now??” In my opinion, Sky still made the right choice by not bringing Wiggo. It never works to have 2 team leaders along- and if you think Wiggins wouldn’t have forced there to be two team leaders, then you’re delusional!

And it looks like Sky already has a Plan B: Richie Porte. He stepped up today and is 8th overall!

Let’s talk for a minute about what an awesome job Jakob Fuglsang did today! He worked hard at the front to make sure Nibali stayed out of trouble AND helped Nibali gain quite a bit of time!

There was some chatter exclaiming how surprising it was that Nibali was doing well in the crap weather. I’m not sure where that was coming from, as I’ve always thought of Nibali as a poor weather rider- he doesn’t seem affected by any weather at all! And today was no exception.

And the debate rages on: should stages like this be neutralized? Tejay said something interesting in an interview– when asked if stages like this should be included, he shrugged and said “That’s for the viewers to decide”, which to me seems like an odd comment- shouldn’t the RIDERS decide what’s safe to ride in? I’d like to see more collective action by the rider, like on the 4th stage of the Giro, where the riders protested racing in crap conditions, and neutralized the first 100km. I have no idea what should have been done, but I was happy they at least took out 2 sections of cobbles- even though it wasn’t the cobbles that caused most of the crashes!

Speaking of Tejay and crashes- poor Tejay did crash 😦 Sad to see that happen and hopefully it won’t affect his overall performance!

I was a bit surprised that Sagan and Cancellara weren’t up there to contest the final sprint. What happened there? I clearly wasn’t paying close enough attention. But it seemed to me that either a) they got caught out and missed the break or b) left it too late to chase the lead group back. Either way, would have been pretty cool to see those two duke it out! And actually, I think I really wanted Fabian to win today!

We tackle doping head on! Or rather, admit we don’t actually care about the doping but are interested in the reactions to the allegations. Plus, we wonder where is taking medicine to feel better considered doping? And why do we love Contador, but not Froome or Wiggins?? To wrap up, that little thing called the Tour de Suisse.

While recapping the Dauphine, Anna comes up with a new expression – “he stuck to him like butter on toast”. And much to Jeff’s surprise, Simon Gerrans won this race, even though he wasn’t there (jk)! And Jeffrey gets a little snarky! We come to the realization that we’re better a recapping races than we are previewing races, as you’ll find out when you listen to us talk about the Tour de Suisse.

It’s a short episode this week, as technical difficulties erased the 2nd half of the podcast 😦 However, we still wrap up the Giro, Anna makes a compelling case for Wiggo playing 2nd fiddle and Jeff makes a BIG prediction for the 2014 Tour!

We recap the first week of the Giro, talking about our impressions and predictions. Jeff also recaps the Tour of California, since Anna didn’t watch it at all. It turns out Jeff finds Greg Lemond too nice and Anna does some nice wordsmithing.

NEW! We’re now available on Stitcher Radio- Stream our podcast on demand via their app. Available here.

If we had been writing the Paris-Roubaix script, Jeff and I would’ve made the group of favorites duke it out in the velodrome, but it was still an amazing race! It’s the best Paris-Roubaix ever, until the next Paris-Roubaix. Jeff has some interesting insight into the mind of OPQS, Anna admits she kinda has a crush on Brad worries Jeff will break up with her for admitting it!